


Parking garage

by lwise2019



Series: Mikkel's Story [20]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22295383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: Lalli leads the tank through a parking garage.
Series: Mikkel's Story [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536739
Kudos: 11





	Parking garage

On the move again, Sigrun was cheerful. "Don't you run over the scout, now!" she warned Tuuri humorously.

"That's not really a risk," Tuuri answered seriously, "we're not fast enough to do that. And ... I still think he might be too tired. Maybe we should go back and start fresh tomorrow."

"Nahh," Sigrun shrugged dismissively.

"I'm sure there isn't a _hundred_ percent certainty that we'd run into an ambush, if we did go back ..."

"110%. Trust me. I know these things. And at least two of you would end up dying. Let's avoid that this time, shall we?"

Mikkel looked over at her thoughtfully. "This time"? He hadn't had a lot of contact with the Norwegian troll-hunters as his journeys for the General had kept him mostly in Iceland and Sweden, and he had not thought much before about what horrific memories might hide behind Sigrun's exuberant exterior. Perhaps he should be more patient with her.

Turning back to the window, frowning out at the city, he worried about Lalli. The scout _was_ tired and should not be running around the city all day after scouting all night. He hadn't even had lunch -- none of them had, actually, but the others were riding in the tank, not running around in the cold.

And yet -- and yet -- what else could they do? They couldn't have stayed dead-ended against the snowdrift, hemmed in by possibly grossling-infested buildings; according to Sigrun, they couldn't retreat down their backtrail looking for a defensible position without risking an ambush; and they couldn't strike out into the city on an unscouted route that might lead them into another dead end or a collapsed roadway -- or worse. They had to send Lalli out to scout.

But what if anything happened to their only scout? Perhaps it was a selfish thought but -- the three remaining immunes were none of them trained scouts, and none had experience in cities. Their only hope would be to work their way out of the city and into open land where they might hope to defend themselves, and where would that be? Kastrup?

Mikkel shuddered slightly at the mere thought. They had surely attracted and killed grosslings for many kilometers around their camp, but _something_ had massacred the entire garrison. The two brave scouts who ran in the next day to investigate the sudden cessation of radio signals had found nothing but the dead, but they had hardly stayed to search the camp. The killers could have been lurking there -- surely _had_ been lurking there, for there was no reason for them to leave -- and were likely there still.

So, not Kastrup. Then where?

His thoughts were interrupted as they came to an intersection where Lalli's tracks showed he had checked every direction and then formed a clear arrow in the snow directing them to the south. Sigrun frowned at this sign.

"If he wasn't sure he could lead us somewhere, he would let us know, right?"

Tuuri bit her lip before answering nervously, "I hope so ... I mean ... I don't really know him _that_ well. I'm not sure what he does under pressure. We never really worked or spent a lot of time together back home. And before we moved to Keuruu he was always out training with Grandma so ... um ... I suppose we have to trust him to make the right call."

"Oh. I see." Sigrun threw a hand in the air in disgust, then turned to Emil. "It was nice meeting all of you, and I hope we can meet up in Valhalla to chat some time."

Mikkel shook his head but said nothing. Tuuri was right; they did have to trust Lalli. This whole misbegotten mission, not to mention their very lives, depended on Lalli's ability to find a safe path for them. What _had_ he been thinking to agree to it?

* * *

Tuuri steered the tank carefully along Lalli's trail but halted when Sigrun put out a hand to stay her. "I don't like this," Sigrun said slowly. "Anyone with a mask on, stay here. The rest of you, follow me." Mikkel and Emil piled out behind her and the three of them studied the situation.

Lalli's tracks led into a building which was shadowed and, after a dozen meters, clear of snow. Turning around slowly, shining his flashlight into the dark recesses and up to the ceiling, Mikkel said softly, "I know what this is. It's called a parking garage. The people of the Old World left their vehicles here when they weren't using them."

There were no vehicles here. It was nothing like the parking garage at the airport.

> The scouts came back in high spirits. They had been to the airport, identified possible grossling nests, but best of all, they had found that the parking garage still stood solid despite nine decades of neglect and was completely full of vehicles. The vehicles on top and around the edges were badly decayed, rusted and rotting from decades in the weather, but those further in were in good shape and could be recycled.
> 
> The whole garrison would get a bonus for this find but the scouts, of course, would get a larger share than others. The soldiers were already excitedly discussing what they would do with the bonus when Captain Knudsen called them to attention and gave them their orders. Christensen went to work on the radio, informing the base of the find; other soldiers were sent to hook up tanks with flat-bed trailers, as the vehicles were in no condition even to be towed; and Mikkel, among others, was assigned to check in and around each vehicle for grosslings.
> 
> Mikkel was deep within the parking garage, flashlight in one hand, crowbar in the other, and his shotgun slung across his back, when he found the skeleton. It was small, just a child, and the delicacy of the skull bones made him think it a girl. She lay curled on her side in the back seat of a four-door car, with a pink blanket drawn up to her shoulders. Her left hand, savagely deformed by the Rash, lay atop the blanket and her legs and feet could be seen under the blanket to be likewise deformed. Her face and head, though, were untouched by the ravages of the Rash.
> 
> It is a peculiarity of the Rash -- and evidence to some that it is utterly unnatural -- that victims who die of it do not decay normally. Their flesh seems to melt away into thin air, leaving the skeleton still held together by tendons and ligaments, and it is long and long after that before natural processes dare to attack the remains. Mikkel was familiar with normal decay, as farm animals occasionally strayed and were not found until well after they had died in whatever trap they had blundered into, and the perfectly preserved skeletons of Rash victims invariably made his skin crawl.
> 
> _Who were you?_ he thought. _Who tucked that blanket so tenderly around your maimed and twisted body? Why did they bring you here and where did they think to flee? Why did they leave you here, alone, to die?_
> 
> But of course he would never know the answers to his questions. She had been left behind and she had died, and now Mikkel would mark the vehicle as safe and Captain Knudsen would have her skeleton dragged out and thrown on the midden with the rest of the trash. Knudsen cared nothing for the non-immune dead.
> 
> "No." Mikkel was startled when he said that aloud, but he meant it. The girl would not be thrown out as trash.
> 
> To his surprise, the car door was unlocked. After a quick glance over his shoulder, he eased it open, mindful that the hinges might have rusted through. As it seemed able to stay open without tearing loose, he left it open and pulled out a scavenging sack which had been tucked in his belt. Gently tugging the skeleton toward him with apologies that he recognized as foolish even as he repeated them, he forced the bones together so that they could be packed into his sack. The sack was disturbingly light when he finished, not more than five kilos for the last remains of a child that someone had once loved and cherished.
> 
> Mikkel eased the door shut again and chalked a circle on the trunk to show the team coming behind him, dragging the vehicles onto the flat-beds, that there were no grosslings in the vehicle.
> 
> In the excitement, no one noticed that Mikkel had scavenged something in the garage and in his free time after his shift ended, he had no difficult scrounging up enough wood for a small pyre. The pyre was burning well and the bones almost consumed when Captain Knudsen -- of course -- turned up to demand to know what he was doing.
> 
> "I'm celebrating, sir," Mikkel answered promptly, having considered how he would deal with his superior. "You see, it's the first new moon after the equinox, which we would celebrate in my family anyway because my great-grandmother always said the festival was something she brought over from the mainland -- and we're here on the mainland so it really should be celebrated -- and then we had this great find in the garage, which is clearly because of the good luck from the new moon, so I built this fire to celebrate our good luck in hopes that it would continue because ..."
> 
> "Yes, yes, yes, very well, carry on." Mikkel had noticed before that Knudsen seemed baffled by floods of words. He was careful to scrub any trace of mockery from his voice, face, and manner as he replied, "Yes, sir!" and saluted as the Captain turned away.

Sigrun was leading the way cautiously through the garage and Mikkel had to hurry to catch up. They all stopped short, though, when they found the first grossling, a troll of which the head had been crushed to a pulp. Taking a deep breath, Sigrun signalled Mikkel to her left and Emil to her right, so that they advanced in a small wedge, ready for a fight.

There had been a fight here, without doubt. Strewn about the floor, walls, and even ceiling were the remains of an extensive nest of trolls. They must have been somewhat resistant to cold as they had been able to nest here, so it was fortunate for the team that they were apparently all dead ... but what had killed them? Mikkel found it hard to believe that the little scout had done it, which meant ...

"There's something big lurking around here," Sigrun murmured, "It got these and ..." -- she gestured at a small splash of fresh red blood visible in the midst of the carnage -- "who wants to tell the driver that her cousin might have been eaten?"

Emil stared at the blood in horror. Of all of them, he was closest in age to Lalli and had worked the hardest to form a relationship with the reserved scout. Crying "What? No!", he took off running through the garage, heedless of possible grosslings, the other two pounding behind him. When Sigrun caught him and yanked him back with an armlock, he pointed wildly ahead, gasping, "He's not eaten! His footprints lead right through and out of the building!"

Sigrun released him as they all studied the footprints in the snow which had blown in on the south side. Indeed, Lalli _had_ passed through the building and nothing had followed him out, but there were still occasional splashes of blood. Disturbingly, however, he had not returned.

The three turned to study the remains of the nest again. Was it possible, Mikkel wondered, that there had been a fight between grosslings earlier, and Lalli had passed through after the victor had departed? But there was the blood ...

"At least these look dead enough to me," Sigrun concluded finally, "I suppose we'll have to tell the driver to follow the scout."

"We can't know if they're all dead, especially not with this many husks around," Mikkel pointed out. And especially not with the blood. But before he could continue, Lalli himself came rushing back into the garage, blood on his face and down the front of his jacket, and passed them without a word.

Sigrun and Mikkel looked at each other and then out of the garage along the scout's backtrail. "He would have yelled _something_ if there were danger," Sigrun said, as if trying to reassure herself, and "He didn't look frightened," Emil ventured uncertainly, and "He's hurt," Mikkel pointed out practically. With no grosslings in the offing and Lalli vanishing into the gloom of the garage, the three of them shrugged as one and followed him back to the tank.

* * *

Leaning wearily against the map table, indeed practically collapsing on top of it, Lalli explained their course to Tuuri. Upon her agreement that she understood, he heaved himself up, turned away, and ran squarely into the solid bulk of Mikkel. Accepting the warm, damp washcloth that Mikkel held out, he cleaned the blood smeared aross the lower half of his face and, with a quick, sly glance at the other's face, swiped carefully behind each ear before returning the washcloth and stripping off his outer clothing.

Before Lalli could dodge past him, Mikkel took him firmly by the chin and tilted his face up. No visible injuries, and the blood had all been on the lower half of his face. A nosebleed, then? Apparently. "Look at me, Lalli," Mikkel ordered, and followed up with a two-finger gesture at Lalli's eyes and then his own. The younger man didn't _quite_ look him in the eyes, but he turned his gaze close enough that the medic was able to see that both pupils were dilated equally. Flicking on his flashlight with his free hand, the medic brought it up to point at the scout's eyes. Lalli winced, but he kept his eyes open and the other could see that his pupils contracted equally. Satisfied, Mikkel released him, patting his shoulder _gently_ , at which the exhausted scout muttered "Okay" and fled to his bedroll, asleep almost as soon as his head touched his pillow.

As Mikkel rolled the jacket carefully to keep the blood from staining anything else until he had a chance to clean it, he paused for a moment, thinking of Lalli's sly glance. Did Lalli -- _could_ Lalli -- make a joke?


End file.
